Lying in everyday life.

DePaulo, Bella M.; Kashy, Deborah A.; Kirkendol, Susan E.; Wyer, Melissa M.; Epstein, Jennifer A.

doi:10.1037/0022-3514.70.5.979

Cited by 1,084 publications

(1,045 citation statements)

References 23 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

937

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Lying is common in everyday life and it seems only slightly more burdensome cognitively than telling the truth-people report that they do not spend much time planning lies and that they regard their everyday lies as of little consequence (DePaulo et al, 1996(DePaulo et al, , 2003.…”

Section: Controlled or Automatic Process?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Sensitive questions in surveys.

Tourangeau¹,

Yan²

2007

Psychological Bulletin

2,224

1,554

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Psychologists have worried about the distortions introduced into standardized personality measures by social desirability bias. Survey researchers have had similar concerns about the accuracy of survey reports about such topics as illicit drug use, abortion, and sexual behavior. The article reviews the research done by survey methodologists on reporting errors in surveys on sensitive topics, noting parallels and differences from the psychological literature on social desirability. The findings from the survey studies suggest that misreporting about sensitive topics is quite common and that it is largely situational. The extent of misreporting depends on whether the respondent has anything embarrassing to report and on design features of the survey. The survey evidence also indicates that misreporting on sensitive topics is a more or less motivated process in which respondents edit the information they report to avoid embarrassing themselves in the presence of an interviewer or to avoid repercussions from third parties.

show abstract

Section: Controlled or Automatic Process?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Sensitive questions in surveys.

Tourangeau¹,

Yan²

2007

Psychological Bulletin

2,224

1,554

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Selfish lies, such as those told for personal monetary gain, to protect one's status or position, or to attain social approval, are commonly viewed as reprehensible (Buller & Burgoon, 1994). In contrast, prosocial lies are colored by people's good intentions, such as to prevent others from feeling hurt or embarrassed (DePaulo et al, 1996), or to benefit others financially (Erat & Gneezy, 2012).…”

Section: Prosocial and Selfish Lyingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lying because we care: Compassion increases prosocial lying.

Lupoli

Jampol

Oveis

2017

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Prosocial lies, or lies intended to benefit others, are ubiquitous behaviors that have important social and economic consequences. Though emotions play a central role in many forms of prosocial behavior, no work has investigated how emotions influence behavior when one has the opportunity to tell a prosocial lie-a situation that presents a conflict between two prosocial ethics: lying to prevent harm to another, and honesty, which might also provide benefits to the target of the lie. Here, we examine whether the emotion of compassion influences prosocial lying, and find that compassion causally increases and positively predicts prosocial lying. In Studies 1 and 2, participants evaluated a poorly written essay and provided feedback to the essay writer. Experimentally induced compassion felt towards the essay writer (Study 1) and individual differences in trait compassion (Study 2) were positively associated with inflated feedback to the essay writer. In both of these studies, the relationship between compassion and prosocial lying was partially mediated by an enhanced desire to prevent emotional harm. In Study 3, we found moderation such that experimentally induced compassion increased lies that resulted in financial gains for a charity, but not lies that produced financial gains for the self. This research illuminates the emotional underpinnings of the common yet morally complex behavior of prosocial lying, and builds on work highlighting the potentially harmful effects of compassionan emotion typically seen as socially beneficial.

show abstract

“…See also Boles et al (2000), Crawford (2003), Brandts and Charness (2003), Croson et al (2003), Ellingsen and Johnnesson (2004), Cai and Wang (2006), Charness and Dufwenberg (2006), Sánchez-Pagés and Vorsatz (2007), Mazar and Ariely (2006), Mazar et al (2008), Dreber and Johannesson (2008), Sutter (2009), Lundquist et al (2009), Ellingsen et al (2009), Gino and Pierce (2009), Gino and Ayal (2011), and Gintis (2012). For a discussion of the social psychology literature on lies, see DePaulo et al (1996). expense of another.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

White Lies

2012

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

I n this paper we distinguish between two types of white lies: those that help others at the expense of the person telling the lie, which we term altruistic white lies, and those that help both others and the liar, which we term Pareto white lies. We find that a large fraction of participants are reluctant to tell even a Pareto white lie, demonstrating a pure lie aversion independent of any social preferences for outcomes. In contrast, a nonnegligible fraction of participants are willing to tell an altruistic white lie that hurts them a bit but significantly helps others. Comparing white lies to those where lying increases the liar's payoff at the expense of another reveals important insights into the interaction of incentives, lying aversion, and preferences for payoff distributions. Finally, in line with previous findings, women are less likely to lie when it is costly to the other side. Interestingly though, we find that women are more likely to tell an altruistic lie.

show abstract

Lying in everyday life.

Cited by 1,084 publications

References 23 publications

Sensitive questions in surveys.

Sensitive questions in surveys.

Lying because we care: Compassion increases prosocial lying.

White Lies

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About